ICYMI: LA Governor Jindal on President Obama’s Energy Speech

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal:

"I do want to start off with the president's comments. He has said there are no silver bullets many, many times and that is absolutely true but the reality is that we as a country should certainly at least be firing  all the bullets we do have. We as Republicans do believe in an all-of-the-above strategy, unfortunately, this administration's actions today have contributed to rising energy prices.

"I want to go through several things the president in his administration could be doing differently to drive down the uncertainty in energy markets and also to increase domestic supply, therefore relieving pressure in prices, increasing our national security, making us less dependent on other countries. We certainly approve of an all of the above strategy but I want to focus on some of the things he's done when it comes to oil and gas, especially natural gas as well as coal, and things they could be doing differently.

"You look at 2011, the average price for the year for a barrel of oil and a gallon of gas it's higher than any time in a hundred and fifty years. That's bad for consumers; it's bad for the economy; it's bad for manufactures.

"The reality is you look at several things: one the president talked again today about how we're producing more energy, more oil today than any time in the last eight years. That's only half the story. What he doesn't say is that much of that production is based on decisions made before he became president. What he doesn't tell you is that much of that production is actually happening on non-federal lands, on private and other non-federal lands. The reality is when you look at the leasing activity, you look at the permitting activity, down here we're certainly impacted by both those policies. When you look at off-shore permitting, that process has slowed down even before the BP oil spill, but even today that permitting activity is still down 30% from the 3 year average, the historical norm prior to the spill. You look at onshore leasing, it is now down to the lowest amount since 1984 for leasing on federal lands for onshore drilling. So, the president likes to take credit for production that's due to decisions made before he took office. What he's not saying is the slowdown in granting permits, the slowdown in granting leases is helping to create uncertainty in the marketplace and again is contributing to the rising prices.

"There's clear bipartisan local support for additional domestic energy production. For example, in the Eastern Gulf, in Anwar, along certain parts of the Mid-Atlantic coast, at the very least the president should be telling his agencies to open new fields to allow more energy production in those areas..."

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